When are gas prices typically highest? Summer, when families hit the road on weeklong vacations where they already will fork over no small sum on food, entertainment, lodging and souvenirs. The cost of unleaded gas is still leaving their budgets feeling quite leaden.

And if you want a burger or steak anytime in the near future, when outdoor grills will be ripe for use after winter hibernation, be ready to reach more deeply into your wallet to get the ribeye or double-stack of your dreams.

Beef prices have soared to historic highs as of late. The Associated Press reported retail prices have climbed as high as $5.28 per pound, with that mark reached in February. That price is the highest seen since 1987 and up about 25 cents just since the start of this year.

Beef is a traded commodity, just like oil or financial stock. It's traded through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and, like oil, is priced in U.S. dollars despite being sold globally. Like any other commodity, certainly in recent years, beef has seen price fluctuations fueled at least in part by speculation, good or bad, from those who buy and sell the product. Unlike oil/gas prices, it seems, there's still some tethering to supply and demand that's causing beef prices to spike so dramatically this year.

Officials with CattleFax, a Colorado information group, told the AP a thinned amount of domestic cattle and growing demand in emerging overseas economies like China are combining to produce the historic price heights. It's beyond frustrating if you're already spending more on rent/mortgage, utilities and gas and just want a nice hamburger to take your mind off things, but it's Economics 101. Capitalism doing what capitalism does.

But CattleFax warned beef prices may not fall significantly in the foreseeable future. A corn or wheat crop can better its performance over the previous year with timely planting and cooperative weather conditions, although it certainly can be difficult to get those to line up ideally. Beef could be much different, CattleFax said, because cattle farmers will have to rebuild their stocks, a longer-term process than simply replanting a row crop. And over the coming years, one wonders whether enough younger people will go into cattle farming to be able to produce the sufficiently plentiful herds needed to bring downward pressure on beef prices.

Don't expect to see burgers and steak vanish from restaurant menus or grocery store aisles, but it will be interesting to see how already-pinched restaurant and grocery operators, to say nothing of their respective customers, deal with higher beef prices if they stick around long-term. Price increases are a last resort for most restaurants and stores, since they badly want to keep the customers who are trying to shrug off the last six years from an economic standpoint to continue to patronize those establishments.

But those businesses may have no choice, especially when their overall cost of doing business often remains high. Tough decisions could be on the horizon.